Destruction and Beauty ("brochure", A4 paper)

DESTRUCTION &

Beauty

INTRODUCTION.2

DESTRUCTION.3

BEAUTY.9

SINGLENESS.10

SUSTAINABILITY.12

THE BIBLE.14

FOLLOWING JESUS.18

ALTRUISM.19

THEISM.21

ANIMALS.26

CONCLUSION.28

BIBLIOGRAPHY.29

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v. 0.4, 14 July 2017
My website is 10v24.net

The type used is Donald Knuth’s Computer Modern Serif.

INTRODUCTION

I wrote a very long book over the last year, but I think
what I most want to say from it fits in a short book, af¬
ter all. This is that book.

This book is entitled Destruction and Beauty. It is about
the destruction of coercive beliefs and the suggestion of
non-coercive beliefs, based in beauty.

Because this book is so short, I’ll put the acknowledg¬
ments here:

Thanks, first of all, to all the educational people I’ve
known, who have shaped me (on purpose or not, lovingly
or not) to be able to see what I see. I can’t name all of
them, so I won’t name any of them.

Thanks to the friends of my writing, through the years:
Gerrit, Richard, Terje, Natalia, and Sarah.

Thanks to the artists “who have known the true gods of
sound and stone and word and tint” (some of whom I’ll
mention later in the book). What an awful life, but how
helpful to me.

2

Additionally,

here are some things that I have found beautiful
over and over:

Blue Bell Knoll by Cocteau Twins
Loveless by My Bloody Valentine
“Hymn of the Cherubim” by Tchaikovsky
Adowa music
Sacred Harp music

The ikons in the Timken Museum

Song of Solomon and Jeremiah

Oranges and mandarins, with a heartbreaking taste.

DESTRUCTION

Maybe, you will find these beautiful as well.

3

What can we know?

What is knowledge? It is certainly a true belief. If I
have a true belief, then my mind is attuned to the way
things are outside it. Perhaps my mind, part of my
mind, is attuned to the way things are in the rest of my
mind.

But if I observe my mind, I find in it many beliefs.

Which ones are true? I think I’ve just brought the prob¬
lem up all over again. How can I know what is true?

How can I know that my way of knowing the truth is
good? Is it true that “My way of knowing the truth is
good”? I would have to know that my way of knowing
the truth was good, in order to know anything at all.

But that brings the problem up all over again. How can
I know what is true?

So, some things I have to just know are true, without
knowing why, or how I know they’re true. Otherwise, I
don’t know anything. But then, why not believe every¬
thing? If I can accept one thing as true, out of nowhere,
for no reason, then why not accept something else as
true, out of nowhere, for no reason? How can I draw a
line between things?

The preceding could be called “epistemology”, the branch
of knowledge that attempts to understand knowledge it¬
self, the practice of examining knowledge, the subject
“knowledge”.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

For further study:

Alexander, Scott. “Meditations on Moloch”,
http: //slatest arcodex.com/2014/07/30/
meditations-on- moloch /

Breininger, Natalia. “Loved to Love Ya, Baby, Bai-Bye”.
https: //nat j u. wordpress .com/2016/04/30/
loved-to-love-ya-baby-bai-bye/

(the phrase “strangers to [a person’s] heart”, from
the “Theism” chapter, came from this.)

Brown, Philip. New Wine for the End Times.

(the book that made the Bible, taken literally,
make sense to me)

Maybury-Lewis, David. Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and

the Modem World.

(also referenced: Iyengar’s The Art of Choosing , Friesen’s
Decision Making and the Will of God.)

Descartes said “I think, therefore I am”, and this is how
he found something he couldn’t doubt. I agree with
Descartes. I think that since I think, I can’t doubt that I
am. I can’t imagine otherwise. But people have ques-

4

29

CONCLUSION

tioned Descartes. I don’t understand how they do it, but
they see otherwise than I do, and than Descartes did.

So, just because I can’t imagine otherwise, I can’t assume
that I’m right. It could just be a failure of my imagina-
There is always more to say, but that is all. tion.

Kant said something like, “the thing-in-itself can never be
known, we can only see appearances”. Reality could be
completely otherwise than what is intelligible to human
beings.

I’ve thought about solipsism. Maybe the whole universe
is just my consciousness, plus a subconscious that says
things that might surprise me. How could I prove other¬
wise?

But someone might then say, “OK, Descartes and Kant
said what they said, and you’ve said what you’ve said,
but what practical difference does it make?”

This is a persuasive counter-argument.

Does epistemology matter when I play racquetball? No.
Does epistemology matter when I talk to someone?
Sometimes, but often enough, no. Does epistemology
matter when I’m happy about something that happened
to me? No. Does epistemology matter when I pray? No
— only when I wish I could pray. Does epistemology
matter when I’m in love? Sometimes, but often enough,
no. Does epistemology matter when I breathe? No.

If epistemology doesn’t help me live my life better, then I
can just forget about it, right? But then I still need to
know how to know things. I think what often happens is
that I forget to question certain foundational beliefs, be¬
liefs which I don’t question, and then from these I go on

28

5

to live my life, until there’s some kind of problem.

This idea is beautiful and very persuasive. It shuts me
up inside, calms and soothes me.

However, why should I think this lias anything to do
with reality? Why should my own goals, my own desires
and Hustings, have anything to do with what is?

Just because something is beautifully persuasive, doesn’t
mean it’s true.

But it could be true. There could be some essential con¬
nection between what is beautiful and useful and what is
true. Maybe the universe is person-centered. Maybe re¬
ality is person-centered.

But how could I know that that is true?

I live in different contexts. I’ve been a few different
things in rny life. Sometimes I live in the context of eco¬
nomics, politics and systems. There’s a certain feel to
that. I could recommend books or blogs that take me
there. Sometimes I live in the context of philosophy (in
which place I find epistemology), other times in the con¬
text of my religious faith. Sometimes I am in the context
of being a 29 year old, hanging out with my friends in
the city. Sometimes I am in the context of someone try¬
ing to make money.

Is it the case that the context of philosophy is the one in
which we come to know truths that apply (though it
might seem otherwise) in all the other contexts? Or is
philosophy (thus, epistemology), only true in its own con¬
text, or in some selection of contexts?

used it as a weapon on them, after all. But my conscious
experience was not of that at all. On the inside I was my
usual calm, mildly loving self.

I think that’s what it’s like to be an animal. Sometimes
animals do very animal things. But they seem to have
personalities, and I think that’s because they really are
personal beings.

I don’t know if this applies to all animals, but it might.

So I try to treat all animals as persons, or at least it is
my goal to try to treat them all as persons.

I don’t know about plants (and fungi and single-celled
organisms). That is a topic for another book.

So I want to not only anthropomorphize God but also
“zoomorphize” God, and “theomorphize” humans and ani¬
mals. We’re different, but we’re all personal beings. A
slogan: “If humanism, then theism and zooism”. So there
could be one term “personism”, to include all three.

6

27

ANIMALS

There is a kind of love that we have for persons which re¬
quires us to love animals. This has been my experience,
at least. If we love animals, it teaches us a faculty of lov¬
ing humans.

I think it is beautiful to believe that each animal is a
personal being, just as I am a personal being and God is
a personal being. We are each subjects, experiences
drawn together in a distinct point of view. We not only
feel, but can have a life as deep as the loneliest night.

We can have preferences and a heart.

Animals look different than humans because God clothes
them differently, speaks them differently. They behave
differently because there is a veil over them.

Drunk people sometimes have a veil over them. What I
mean is that they are themselves, but who they are
doesn’t come through, because of the alcohol. It comes
through, but it doesn’t. I don’t drink, but this is what
I’ve seen sometimes. I wonder if it feels that way to a
drunk person?

I do have bipolar disorder, and I had a full-blown manic
episode where I experienced what I guess could be called
dissociation. I can remember being two different people.
The orderlies were moving me from place to place in
some kind of mental health facility, and I very calmly
and without any malice, anger, or ill-intent felt like I
should pick up the oxygen tank which for some reason
was with me. The orderlies said “He’s got the oxygen
tank!” and moved to restrain me. Maybe I would have

If reality is person-centered, then each of the contexts is
held together by a personal being. Somehow, in my case,
though each context seems to have a past and a future
all its own, they are held together in my life, and I expe¬
rience numerous different ones of them, and (though each
has its own distinct past and future life, each tells my life
story reaching from the farthest past to the never-ending
future), I go from one to another. And then epistemol¬
ogy becomes a footnote to the whole.

What is actually true in every context is then something
other than philosophy. Can we say what that acontex-
tual truth is? Maybe. If we could express it adequately
in words, then we could enter into philosophy about it.
But epistemology would still apply. Epistemology
doesn’t go away. So we have to deny philosophy, deny
textual thinking, at some point.

When I speak to a person, there are the assumptions,
feelings, impressions which are spoken textually, conveyed
in words, in text, out loud, explicitly; and there are those
assumptions, feelings, impressions, which are unspoken,
conveyed “between the lines” of words, in subtext, or non¬
verbally, implicitly. The subtextual world is powerful,
and can sometimes be brought into text, and sometimes
cannot, can sometimes be half-seen, and sometimes oper¬
ates completely beyond our awareness. Reasoning dis¬
solves boundaries, always asking “why not?” But what is
subtextual is immune to textual reasoning. And this is
how we do not fall prey to epistemology.

Is there something wrong with falling prey to epistemol¬
ogy?

Maybe not. I don’t know that I could prove otherwise.

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7

If I speak to people who are fully committed to textual
reasoning, then I speak to people who have gone into a
complete destruction of all knowledge. These people are
agnostics. What is left, except to make suggestions, and
to paint pictures with words? If I speak to people who
reserve some part of themselves to subtext, who affirm
this as valid (implicitly, where it counts, or explicitly,
where it is less essential), then I can try to prove a point,
but it is just as well that I say what is beautiful.

This helps us understand his point of view and have his
heart. Sometimes we have to do this in the half-atheism
of prudence, where we have to manage resources as
though God will not help us. Other times we have to
rely on God to tell us what to do, because we need to
come closer to him in that way. We have to learn to
track God’s reality, to be sensitive to him, but also to
track the reality of people, to be sensitive to them.

God is described as “Father” in the Bible. When we were
young, perhaps 5 years old, some of us may have thought
that our fathers were terrifying, and knew everything,
and could come in and out of our lives at their sovereign
discretion. But then, 20 or 30 years later, we see our fa¬
thers much differently. Our fathers are not terrifying, we
know they don’t know everything, and we know that
they are not sovereign. And yet we still love them, as
though none of that really mattered. But now we are to
an age to help our fathers in their good work, and to
support them in their frailty — just as we are frail. And
in reality, we are at the age now to have five-year-old
children of our own, and if we are men, to be their terri¬
fying, all-knowing, sovereign fathers. But we know that
we are frail, and our fathers knew they were frail, when
we were 5 years old.

God is less frail than us and less frail than our fathers,
but is vastly more responsible and emotional.

This all, is this beautiful?

25

BEAUTY

We can love people, and God, as an image. We can extol
them, speak well of them, find them exciting and appeal¬
ing, think of how good they are, long to be with them,
explain to everyone all their good points, never stop
thinking or talking about them because of their good fea¬
tures, their natures.

We can also love people, and God, as people. I can be
an artist’s fan, but I probably can’t help her if she’s sick.
Her husband can bring something to her in the hospital,
and help pay her medical bills, and be present to her, but
the most I can do is buy a copy of her alburn. I suppose
I love her as a person if I do that, but it’s nothing com¬
pared to her husband’s love of her. And I might not buy
her alburn, after all, though I could extol her and recom¬
mend her to anyone.

If we no longer love people as images, then how can we
find whom to love? There’s no reason to choose one per¬
son over another. Whatever might choose one person
over another depends on their image, but we no longer
look to image. So if we really love people as people, we
love all people. If we love in this way, we love God and
all people. And God loves all people. The God who
makes us forsake all idols does not set up any of us as
his.

There are limitations which force us to choose one person
over another to help. For God, the only lirrritation is his
own discouragement. So if we are demandingly loving of
someone, we can pray, and if it was for someone for
whom God could do something (in his wisdom and con¬
straint), he can help that person. This is one way to
help God, to be theists.

Another way to be a theist is to seek to do God’s work.

24

9

SINGLENESS

I was born single, and I think I’ll die single.

Some people say “everyone dies alone”, and mean that as
a saying of horror. But I think that there’s something
beautiful about that. I think that death is an offering. I
offer myself to God. When I die, I finally let go. Death
is the completion of trust.

And then what happens? I don’t know. If I knew, I
wouldn’t be letting go. I have my thoughts about this,
about a God who would, and will, resurrect me, but I do
not think these thoughts in every context.

I am romantically unattached. I was born that way, and
I think I’ll die that way. If the saying is “everyone dies
alone”, then it could also be “everyone can live alone”.
Dying alone and living alone are parallel. It’s just you.

I like having empty pockets.

I realized at some point that neither promiscuity, mar¬
riage, nor celibacy came easy to me. Some people don’t
seem to have a choice, but I do. Because I have a choice,
it’s hard. But then I am free to choose what is most
beautiful to me. So I have chosen to be celibate.

A number of years ago (5 years ago), I read a book on
choosing (Sheena Iyengar’s book The Art of Choosing)
and did an exercise in it, and from that realized that my
priorities were not to have a family. That was part of
my decision.

That same year, I read a book about decision-making

with God, it makes sense from God’s point of view to
keep us alive. He can destroy the world (the outward ap¬
pearances of things) and bring us all back to a new ar¬
rangement of things, but our hearts remain ours, and
would begin to propagate new external problems in a
new world.

However, though God can be discouraged and temporar¬
ily kept from doing what he wants, he can’t be killed,
and as long as we are not hardened toward him, we can
live.

In the meantime, there is a lot of unnecessary suffering.

For a few people, those who harden themselves against
God, there waits hell, which is a finite suffering, and then
they go to nothing. Hell, as a belief, and as a place, has
its place. If we must fear, better to fear God than other
things. But hell is heartbreaking, and the fear of God is
not necessary, if we love God.

The story I’ve just told is ugly, in some ways, but evil is
ugly and speaks against beauty. There is beauty in the
ugliness. I don’t know if I believe this story I’ve told.
Maybe it’s too new for me, or maybe my heart is not al¬
truistic enough. It may be incompatible with the Bible.
Jeremiah 32:27 says “Behold, I am the LORD, the God
of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me?” 3 — which is a
question that could be answered “yes”, but which is in
the form of a rhetorical question. Yet a limited God
might be forced to maintain a terrifying, perfect image,
even if in reality he couldn’t do everything. Perhaps this
is too ugly a thought.

3 English Standard Version

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23

So God is under a lot of stress, and can be discouraged,
weighed down.

What is the nature of God’s power? It could be that he
is able to speak to everyone, and can think very quickly,
to think of the right things to say. This is why the
sensed world can be so immediately persuasive. Perhaps
God is infinite because he operates infinitely quickly. In
that case, he can act on all other beings in a way that he
has impressive power over them, but if his own thought
process turns against him, as it can in depression or dis¬
couragement, then for him to operate infinitely quickly
harms him all the faster. He could become so over¬
whelmed with discouragement that he might destroy the
whole world and start all over. But he can manage this
emotion by withdrawing from certain contexts, such as
the contexts of paying attention to us in our personal re¬
alities of suffering and sin. Instead, he can numb himself
as we do what we do with his body.

By disengaging with us, he allows evil into our personal
lives. Because he can be stressed by evil, then Satan,
who is a finite being (or a nation of beings), has leverage
over him. Because of this, God and Satan negotiate.

Out of these negotiations come features of our reality
that are hard to explain if a loving God exists, exactly to
alienate some of us from God, and to cause us misery,
which is to Satan a good in itself. But these negotiations
allow God to do more good in the present than otherwise
possible.

(Garry Friesen’s book Decision Making and the Will of
God) and the author drew my attention to what the
Bible says about romance. Jesus suggests, to those who
can, to be celibate. It seemed beautiful to me to follow
that.

Celibacy can be brutal, can produce as much heartache
as dating. All of this has taken something out of me.
Beauty attracts us as an image and is dangerous, can be
a horror. There’s something in us that is disturbing,
called out by beauty. My reality has been a horror real¬
ity. But yet when the image of something, the image of
celibacy as much as the image of a person, is taken
down, broken; or maybe the better image is, “hip-
touched” (like Jacob wrestling with God 1 ), or better put,
when we pay more than we were willing to pay for some¬
thing; the beauty can still remain. And now, the thing
that had to be changed, me or you, has changed, but
what is beautiful and valuable can remain as it always
was, and we will always have its beauty.

The sticking point is us, our hearts. When we come to
be in tune with God, when we cease to be “strangers to
God’s heart”, then Satan has lost. So he tries to keep us
from doing that, so that we can continue to cause pain to
God. As long as it’s possible for us to come into tune

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11

SUSTAINABILITY

THEISM

Someday, before this world is rolled up like a map and
put away, and we are taken to the next, we may arrive at
sustainability.

We might destroy ourselves, but if we keep living, eventu¬
ally we will reach sustainability.

What will that day look like? We have some clues by
looking at the cultures of humans who have achieved sus¬
tainability before us. There are people who have
adapted to living in the same areas for thousands of
years. There were many of these cultures, especially in
North and South America, Africa, the Pacific Islands and
in Australia, before modern Europeans brought their
“guns, germs, and steel” to the rest of the world, along
with their infectious culture (including a kind of Chris¬
tianity, an infectious leaven). Many of these cultures
have passed away, but there are records of them, and the
way their societies functioned.

There can be different sustainabilities, just as there can
be different maturities. Someone can settle into one
adult self, but if they were raised differently, perhaps into
another. Modern culture is an immaturity, an adoles¬
cence or young adulthood. But around the age of 30 (for
many people), it can be said that adulthood is reached,
for better or worse.

I read a book called Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the
Modern World. The author, an anthropologist who
worked in Brazil, saw something like this happen:

To love God is an altruistic act.

There are different meanings to the word “theism”. Usu¬
ally it has meant “believing that a personal God exists”.
There’s a philosophical term “classical theism”, which
means “God exists and is omnipotent, omniscient, orn-
nibenevolent, and omnipresent.”

There’s a term “humanism”, which means something like
“to love human beings because they suffer, to help human
beings”. So another meaning of “theism” could be “to
love God because he suffers, to help God.”

Here is something to think about, a story.

If reality is person-centric, that might mean that there is
nothing except persons. A person is simply experience,
which is a life-story or life-process. A person is simply
experience drawn together in a single point of view. Ex¬
perience is simply communication. I communicate a lit¬
tle bit to myself, but mostly I communicate to God, by
moving my fingers or legs (or sending thoughts through
my brain), and God communicates back, by showing me
the world, even my own body. What I say to you or any¬
one else, goes through God.

Any time I use my body in a way that is sin to God, I
make God have to do something that is sin to him.
There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance, being God, main¬
taining a world in which people use it, the world, his
body, in painful ways. We can violate God.

12

21

couragement. We could hold each other accountable or
challenge each other, but I think this is not as beautiful.
There’s fear in those. But, to each their own.

20

The tribe held log races. They would divide the tribe
into two teams. Then they would cut a large but not too
large log off of a palm tree. The log would be heavy
enough for one person to carry for a while with some
difficulty.

The teams would run, with people on each team coming
up to relieve their teammates of the log, a kind of relay
race. Then, one team would reach the village first, and
be victorious. There would be speeches (these people
love to make speeches).

One time, the anthropologist saw the tribe cutting obvi¬
ously unequal logs. He questioned why this was done,
but it was done.

The two teams set out to run. As one could expect, the
team with the heavier log fell behind. But then, some¬
thing happened which surprised the anthropologist.
Runners from the lighter-log team came over to help the
team that was carrying the heavier log! And the heavier
log caught up, and the two teams were very close.

There was a great deal of excitement in the village. The
race was very close, and one of the teams barely won.
Very enthusiastic speeches were given.

Will something like this happen, in our sustainable fu¬
ture? I don’t know, but I hope for something as beauti¬
ful as that.

13

THE BIBLE

I grew up in a Christian family, and have read many of
the books of the Bible many times. I went through a
journey of trying to understand how the Bible made
sense.

I found a book that made the Bible make sense to me.
But then after I read that book, I was trying to figure
out what was really true. How can the Bible be true? It
seems like it’s not corroborated by other evidence, some¬
times.

Do people believe the Bible because it has been proven to
be true, corroborated by all the evidence? I think some
people do. They think that in fact, the real evidence
suggests that the Bible really is 100% literally true.

Many people say otherwise. I find what they say appeal¬
ing, but then, I do not know.

People tell of times when, simply explaining the Gospel
story to someone, the other person immediately knew it
was true and changed their lives. There was no rigorous
knowing going on. They just knew. There was some¬
thing “subtextual” going on, I guess.

So what do I think the Bible says? There are many de¬
nominations, which each say different things, but this is
what I have come to.

God created the universe. People sinned, and because of
that, life had to be hard. God chose a people group to
work with primarily, but that didn’t work out. God sent

ALTRUISM

Some people give 10% of their income to help cure dis¬
eases. A few give 90% of their income. Some people give
of their income to help teach people about Jesus. Some
people are paid this money and actually do the work, of
curing and of teaching.

There is something beautiful in self-giving. It’s like the
beauty of singleness. You offer yourself, no more, no less.
There’s a humility in only living off what you need, and
a humility in the generosity of giving everything else.

Evil says “wake up from your beautiful dream” and to
deal with evil then becomes beautiful, because we forget
beauty. Some people operate out of the sense that evil is
real. Evil is so strong, it prevents epistemology. Perhaps
these people are best suited for being altruists, out of
anyone.

But altruism can be distorted by fear. An altruist, out of
fear and drivenness, can burn him- or herself out. An al¬
truist might even do something horrible, out of responsi¬
bility to “the greater good”. Evil has a prestige which
multiplies its power. That horrible thing might not have
seemed unavoidable, if we weren’t in a fearful context, or
context-set. Some altruists make simple decisions, but
some make difficult decisions.

Perhaps we can love out of beauty rather than out of
fear, just as effectively as we would out of fear. I think
this requires that we encourage each other. Hebrews
10:24 suggests that we “stir each other up to love and
good works”. I would take this in the direction of en-

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19

FOLLOWING JESUS

Scott Alexander wrote “Meditations on Moloch”, which is
about how systems become worse, but also more ad¬
vanced. Competitive people throw away what hinders
competition, and so beauty is lost. But competitiveness
itself becomes more excellent. He calls this “Moloch”, af¬
ter the god of the Ammonites, to whom people sacrificed
their children.

Jesus’ teachings, to me, appear to be an answer to the
problem of Moloch. Alexander suggests that some kind
of God is needed to govern systems, to keep competition
from running over. But short of that, a human being
could take the role.

Jesus taught people to be prudent, but also to trust God.
And he also told people to work hard, to be salt, light,
and leaven. He was pushing people to use their talents,
but he wasn’t pushing all people. He was pushing the
people who were drawn to all-out trust in God, the ones
who were still with him after he said his teachings about
not worrying about tomorrow, and selling everything and
giving to the poor and following him. He was making a
people group, of talented people who didn’t think like or¬
dinary talented people. He was causing them to succeed,
but for different reasons.

If you look at the life of Jesus (and the death of Jesus)
and you are drawn to living it yourself, it is likely be¬
cause you love beauty. You can die for beauty without
fear of coercive power; you can be orthogonal to Moloch.

his son, Jesus, who accurately represented God to the
world, and Jesus was killed by the people he was sent to.
Then people who were inspired by Jesus told people
about him. And then they made a prophecy: some years
in the future, Jesus would return to earth. The world as
we know it would end, and then those of us who hadn’t
completely hardened ourselves to God’s voice would be
resurrected to a new life. Some of us would be com¬
pletely in tune with God, and would work as God’s
agents to instruct and encourage everyone else. Eventu¬
ally, everyone would become holy, in tune with God, and
then we would all join God forever.

The Bible says other things. It talks about the nature of
God. God created the universe and is in control of phys¬
ical reality. God is also emotional and is affected by our
dissonances with him and with each other. God is more
emotional than I am, more caring than I am. God is
more responsible than I am. God doesn’t always get
what he wants. God can make all things work out in the
end, and yet some people die because they can’t come
into tune with him, they choose not to. God doesn’t
want that to happen, but it happens. God seems to talk
to Satan, a being who seeks to tempt God by saying that
we’re not worth loving, and tempts us in many different
ways.

Reality is not all about beauty. Reality is also about
evil, and about persons. Evil says “wake up from your
beautiful dream” and to deal with evil then becomes
beautiful, because we forget beauty. What is most beau¬
tiful is to be a person, and what makes a person beauti¬
ful is them, in who they are. If reality is person-cen¬
tered, this makes sense. To transcend beauty is the most
beautiful thing, because then we are left with real per¬
sons.

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But God, in his particularity, has some preferences that
we might not understand. He doesn’t want us to drink
blood, or to engage in what could be called, in general,
sexual immorality. I know that there is a tribe in East
Africa that used to live off of blood and milk. 2 How
could we tell these people not to do that? There are
many people in the West who practice sexual immorality.
How can we tell these people not to do that? Do we
know for certain that we really understand the Bible on
this point?

To understand the Bible is beyond me. But when I read
it last (I read the whole thing over the last year), it
seemed to me that I could obey the commands to not
commit sexual immorality or drink blood, at least, that I
could make those goals of mine.

1 think that when the world ends, we will get our an¬
swers. In the meantime, we have a lot of choices. These
choices are hard to make, but they allow us to go to
where we find beauty. If the choice were too easy, we
would be stuck with whatever made “perfect sense”.
Choosing allows us to exercise our hearts.

The Bible is both attractive and repulsive. It is attrac¬
tive in ways that God is attractive, and repulsive in ways
that God is repulsive. So, I should say that God is both
attractive and repulsive. Yet the greatest beauty comes
from loving real people, who are both attractive and re¬
pulsive. There is a deeper attraction, in me, to that.

Do I know that the Bible is true, that God is as de¬
scribed in the Bible? I can’t explain it all textually,

2 The Maasai, who consume less blood nowadays, but still consume
some.

which is to say, no, I don’t know any of that, if I expose
it to epistemology. But the message speaks to me, and
so that’s how I live. And of all the things which exist, to
me, in every context, God is among them, and I think in
a subtextual way, what I mean when I say (or see) God
is “God as revealed in the Old and New Testaments”. I
can only speak for myself, when I am in public.

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